Busted by Your Own Memory
Is making the world a safer place as easy as technology makes it? Well, now with brain fingerprinting (BF) they will know whether a criminal was at the crime scene or not. It is kind of like a lie detector test but BF reads a person’s involuntary response to a memory. It will measure and record specific brain waves that are only active when a person has memories of an event or place. This will judge whether he is innocent or guilty.

Brain fingerprinting was invented by
Lawrence Farwell. The idea was that a sound, picture, event, or words would reflect if the suspect had prior knowledge of the event or activity. The person to be tested wears a special headband with electronic sensors that measure the EEG from several locations on the scalp.

Besides the high accuracy of his machine, people have been criticizing it. Most notably in a number of papers by J. Peter Rosenfeld, of North Western University. The next thing that was said was: that it did work 100% accurately, but the wider class of P300-based tests said that the BF gave the results they obtained was a chance. The United States General Accounting Office said that they had interviewed the three researchers, and said that they all had said that they still needed to do more research about the BF.

Gravity Car
gravity racing car
gravity racing car
The Silbervogel is a gravity racing car without an engine, German for Silverbird. This was made for an extreme gravity series in Irvine, California. The aim of the design was to bring out the tradition and competition in people. It was made by Mercedes, when building this car the most important thing that you have to remember is aerodynamics.

The body of the vehicle is quite different, here is what I meanexternal image gravity-racing-car1.jpg: it is divided into two parts, a transparent lower shell and a silver top part with a black band running from front to back, the racing car seems to hover a few inches off the road. The car is extremely light and rigid; this goes for the rims as well. They have made it to where each detail is in lowest resistance. This also applies to its main body shape. The aerodynamics is very important especially for gravity racecars. This is why the Silbervogel is fully encased.

The Silbervogel is a very unique car. It is used for gravity racing, and is made very carefully. It has very confusing parts to it and when raced comes inches off the ground. It was made by Mercedes, and is used in Irvine, California. They have very confusing parts and a top and bottom half.

Need a Ning
Do you know what a Ning is? Well at our school they put your grade into three groups, and one group has created a website like MySpace. They can get on them at school, home, anywhere. The purpose of having one is to blog in them but they can still chat with their friends. They get to create and decorate it. You can put up pictures of yourself, others, groups of people, and even cute sparkly images that you get off of Photobucket.

Ning is basically like a MySpace, except it is used for educational purposes. Mrs. Lincoln monitors it (a seventh grade social studies teacher), and approves/sees everything that goes on our profile pages. The whole K-9team is a part of it, and for the past 2 weeks, they have been editing their own to show what our culture is all about. They had to make an about me and a section on “Describe your teenage culture.” You were to be very detailed with it and make it very clear. They can put videos, pictures, class work, and music on there but it has to be appropriate content.

I think that it would be fun to use a Ning instead of some other social networking site. And you could use them at school. For more information on it, go to Mrs. Lincolns private page, click on Lecture Notes and Handouts, and click on the Ning rubrics. Or you could go to www.Ning.com.



Do you have a Zune?
Have you ever heard of a Zune? Well if you haven’t then you are missing out on some great technology. It is kind of like an iPod but with a bit of a twist. You can listen to your music, look at pictures and set them as your background, watch movies that you upload to it, listen to the radio, share your things with your friends, listen to your pod cast. Oh yeah, did I tell you that on your Zune there is a social network, were you can share your music and listen to theirs.

The 30 GB holds up to 7,500 songs, 25,000 pictures, and 100 hours of video. They also come in
A Zune
A Zune

five colors: brown, pink, red, black, or white. With a Zune you can plug it into your Xbox 360 and customize the soundtrack in your favorite games. But that’s not all, there is also Wireless Zune-to-Zune sharing. That means that you can share full-length tracks of your favorite songs, albums, playlist, and pictures.

The Zune is a great way to listen to music from your collection or the radio. You can look at pictures and set them as your background, watch movies that you have uploaded, share your things with your friends, and listen to your podcasts. You can do so many things with this technology.




Helping Hands
Microsoft is reaching out and helping smaller businesses such as training dogs, translating documents, retouching photos, and all kinds of other things. So instead of making cute little unprofessional flyers, you can make the high-tech type flyers. With a little help of Office Live Small Business (O.L.S.B.), you can make flyers so professional that the big shots are quivering about them. And get this, the things that only big businesses used to only be able to use, is now free on Office Live Small Business. Half of the small businesses in America, and 70 percent of the one-person businesses do not have web sites. How do they get business? That’s a good question; I’m guessing that they just rely on people in their town.

This Web site is where you can set up all of those business things like: a Web site, an online ad campaign, e-mail promotions, company communications. All by yourself, even if you’re not very technical. For the first time, these big dog tools are within your reach, mainly because you don’t have to hire somebody to set them up because most of them are free. Microsoft is really doing them a gigantic favor so. This is helping them make more money, and meet more people that will hopefully come back and buy more.

A number of really useful Office Live features are now free. Only paying subscribers enjoyed the ability to synchronize their Office Live address books and calendars with Outlook, so they could work on them when not connected to the Internet. Now everybody can do that! Same if you wanted to use Microsoft to design a web page, you don’t have to pay anyone now.


iPhone vs. Blackberry

external image 070906_Tech_PhonesTN.jpg
Would you rather an iPhone or a Blackberry? Both phones are really cool and can do a lot of things like: a great link to your email accounts, a search that lets you find old messages that you have sent or received, and you can color your fonts. Great links to web browsers such as Google and Yahoo. You can see when your aim friends are on so you can chat and give them a call.

These are great phones, but when will we find out which one is better? Really nobody has said which one is better but some people are jumping to conclusions just because they like one type of phone. And that’s not the way that it should be. Personally I think that both phones are really confusing and that I would probably break the iPhone because it’s a touch screen and I probably would not be able to work the Blackberry.

They Blackberry normally cost $349 with a $100 online rebate with a two year plan, however, costs it costs $399 with a one year plan. The iPhone normally cost $245-$280, so there around the same cost. But we still don’t know which one is better. I think that these are two great phones and that we should not be judging them on who likes what better. It should be judged on what is better.


The Apple iPhone
The Apple iPhone


The Phone
What all can an iPhone do?? The iPhone has an outstanding link to your email accounts, the most advanced web browser ever on a portable device. The iPhone automatically syncs your bookmarks from your mac or your pc. Google and Yahoo are built into the phone for the most convenient web searching, and an iPhone can multitask, so you can be making a call while sending pictures to a friend or surfing the web over a Wi-Fi connection.

An iPhone can really help you with a busy schedule, because you wouldn’t have to hurry back to your house when you definitely had to use the computer for your business or when your other sibling’s are hogging the computer, you could just get on from your phone. Plus if one of your parents or siblings will not let you change the channel to watch a movie then you could just watch it on your iPhone.

I am still in the middle of convincing my parents that I need one, but your parents might like the fact of you and your sibling not fighting over the computer or the television. That was the only fact that my parents were going for, because they didn’t want me to get on my phone and reach MySpace during the school day. But then my parents decided that they might get me one for my birthday, and all I had to do was to keep building their trust in me, and promise to be responsible.




Today’s Technology
By: Nikki Aldrich
Computers
Computers


In August 2007, the very beginning of the school year, one of our Business Technology teachers made the children do numerous projects in Microsoft PowerPoint. They have recently finished working in Microsoft word with MLA style reports. I have personally done PowerPoint and it’s not that hard. But I have never done anything with MLA style reports.

Coach Adams is now making them learn how to work with Microsoft Excel. I talked to some of the students and they all agreed that it was the most important thing that they had done all year. But they also said that it was really confusing. Coach Adams said that it was his goal to kind of confuse them because it normally makes them think more.

The last three-four weeks of school they will be working on a project using everything that they have learned this year. If I was one of his students I would be worrying about whether I remembered everything or not. But most of the kids are trying to not even think about it and cross the bridge when it comes time.